The Catholic Thing

By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza For devotees of Cardinal Newman, the coming week was already highly anticipated, with his formal declaration as a Doctor of the Church on the solemn feast of All Saints. Then this week, the Vatican announced that Pope Leo XIV would also name him the co-patron saint of Catholic education, along with St. Thomas Aquinas. A happy thing, as few have given as much thought to the philosophy of education as St. John Henry, particularly regarding his (ill-fated) project in Dublin to found a Catholic university. Though the combination of Aquinas and Newman - or the combination of Aquinas and anyone? - is formidable, I confess I never think of them as teachers, per se. Scholars, certainly. And seekers of truth, more students themselves even than teachers of others. Both were creatures of the university - and professors do research and teach, with many accepting the latter as the price of doing the former. It's not unusual for the most accomplished scholars to teach very little, if at all. In the event, both patrons taught more through their writing rather than their lectures or tutorials. The Aquinas-Newman dyad is a happy one for another reason, in that over many years on campus their prayers were the ones I most recommended to students, fitting for their stage of life. Both wrote prayers and hymns. St. Thomas gave us the hymns for Corpus Christi, and I consider no occasion unsuitable for Praise to the Holiest in the Height (here), Newman's hymn from The Dream of Gerontius. The prayers I recommended to students were Aquinas' Prayer before Study and Newman's Mission of My Life. Not only young students can profit by praying them. The Thomistic prayer before study appears here and there in different forms. The estimable Dominican friars of the St. Joseph Province use this version: Creator of all things, true source of light and wisdom, origin of all being, graciously let a ray of your light penetrate the darkness of my understanding. Take from me the double darkness in which I have been born, an obscurity of sin and ignorance. Give me a keen understanding, a retentive memory, and the ability to grasp things correctly and fundamentally. Grant me the talent of being exact in my explanations and the ability to express myself with thoroughness and charm. Point out the beginning, direct the progress, and help in the completion. I ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The version I first learned when I was an undergraduate appears in the Raccolta, and expands the initial salutation: Infinite Creator, who in the riches of Thy wisdom didst appoint three hierarchies of Angels and didst set them in wondrous order over the highest heavens, and who didst apportion the elements of the world most wisely… It reminds us why Thomas is the Angelic Doctor, and a reminder too that intelligences have a lofty place in God's providence. I could never remember what the three hierarchies of angels were, but no matter, it was pleasing to think that they were watching over me. The Raccolta's English translation speaks of "copious eloquence," but the Dominican version above goes with "thoroughness and charm." I prefer the latter, as the world needs more wholesome and holy charm. Students, it seems to me, would learn better from charming teachers, even though neither Aquinas nor Newman are often thought of as charming. Newman, though, does propose in his "definition of a gentleman" a kind of charm as desirable. Education depends upon good teachers, but the goal of education is to effect some good in the students. Thus, Aquinas and Newman are exemplary models, for their achievements in the life of the mind, the search for truth, effected in them genuine goodness, the witness of holiness. The Prayer before Study was never as popular as Newman's Mission of My Life, which many memorized. Study, after all, can be hard. A mission is exciting. Newman's prayer is simply one of the best ever written in English and, while resonant with the...

By Francis X. Maier This year marks the 30th anniversary of Christopher Lasch's final book. Published just a few months after his death, The Revolt of the Elites (1995) capped a series of five extraordinary works starting with his Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (1977). An accomplished historian, Lasch was also a penetrating social critic. He was never religious and always a man of the old, democratic left. But he saw the world clearly and wrote about it honestly. As a result, he had many Christian admirers. And much of his work aligns, if imperfectly, with Catholic concerns. Reading him today is like paging through the diary of a fiercely astute prophet. Simply put, Lasch argues that the appearance of modern life masks its real nature. We're swamped with material comforts and choices, but they have no higher meaning. Our personal autonomy is celebrated in marketing hype. Then it's promptly undermined in practice, because an economy organized around consumption needs a steady pool of dependent consumers. The Industrial Revolution created new wealth and eased the hardships of life for many. But it also removed work from the home, centralized it, and collectivized the labor force under "scientific" management. This, in turn, fed the rise of the social sciences, which - in Lasch's view - presume the inability of most people to understand and manage their own lives, and who thus need guidance from a phalanx of expert "helping professions." As he relentlessly documents, the early leaders of American social science viewed religion as a form of mystification and the traditional family as "the last stand of amateurs"; a breeding ground for authoritarianism, neuroses, and social disorders needing therapeutic intervention from properly educated specialists. That attitude subtly endures and infects the wider culture. It bleeds over into our politics. The American Founders presumed a citizenry of reasonably intelligent and productive adults; in other words, people capable of self-governance, engaging the community while managing their own affairs. Today, the nation is a very different creature. As early as 1962, John F. Kennedy claimed that "most of the problems, or at least many of them that we now face, are technical problems, are administrative problems. . .they deal with questions which are beyond the comprehension of most men." [emphasis added] Let that sink in. For Lasch, who quoted that line in his work, Kennedy simply - and inadvertently - expressed the spirit of America's increasingly elitist leadership class, a class too often suspicious of the very people it claims to represent. Since Lasch's death, the nation's "technical" and administrative problems have only increased. So has the thicket of complex professional bureaucracies meant to handle them. So has the army of therapists dealing with the inevitable social and psychic costs. And so has the gulf between America's expert class and the mass of citizens they manage. For Lasch, this pattern of governance creates new forms of character weakness and illiteracy in everyday life: People increasingly find themselves unable to use language with ease and precision, to recall the basic facts of their country's history, to make logical deductions, to understand any but the most rudimentary texts, or even to grasp their constitutional rights. The conversion of popular traditions of self-reliance into esoteric knowledge administered by experts encourages a belief that ordinary competence in almost any field, even the art of self-government, lies beyond the reach of the layman. For the individual, the result is a cocktail of anxieties, appetites, resentments, and a sense of being manipulated. A leader like Donald Trump is almost unavoidable, the product of populist blowback. Ironically, as Lasch writes in The Minimal Self (1984): A culture organized around mass consumption encourages narcissism. . .not because it makes people grasping and self-assertive but because it...

By Michael Pakaluk Pope Leo XIV took his name to signal his closeness to Leo XIII, and yet in his recent Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi te, his statements sometimes seem at odds with his predecessor: on the root of social evils, the remediation of poverty, and private property. For Leo XIV, the root of social ills is inequality. Reaffirming Francis, he says: "I can only state once more that inequality 'is the root of social ills.'" (n. 94) But for Leo XIII, in his first encyclical, "On the Evils of Society" (Inscrutabili Dei consilio), the root of social ills is rather the rejection of Christianity by civil powers: "the source of [social] evils lies chiefly, We are convinced, in this, that the holy and venerable authority of the Church, which in God's name rules mankind, upholding and defending all lawful authority, has been despised and set aside." (n. 3) The difference is not small, because if Christianity is not necessary, then, to eliminate social evils, it would suffice for civil powers to eradicate "structures of sin," that is, structures of inequality. But if Christianity is necessary, then clearly the most important policy for a civil power would be for it to encourage, or at least provide the good conditions for, Christian belief and practice (for example, in making it easy, not difficult, for parents to send their children to religious schools). In Rerum novarum, Leo XIII taught that the quest for equality is an unreal dream of socialism: "the condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with, for it is impossible to reduce civil society to one dead level. There naturally exist among mankind manifold differences of the most important kind; people differ in capacity, skill, health, strength; and unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal condition." (n. 17) If one were to say, in response, that the inequality meant by Leo XIV, following Francis, is not that of outcome and possessions, but of standing before the law and of respect for human dignity, then the nature of "poverty" changes radically, and immediately the poorest members of our societies are the unborn, because it is they whose equal human dignity is most pervasively denied, around the world. It would follow that the Church's "preferential option for the poor" must take the form of making the pro-life cause pre-eminent. As regards the remediation of poverty, remember that Leo XIII was well-briefed on contemporary economic science through his assistant, Fr. Matteo Liberatore, S.J. The work of Adam Smith begins exactly with the observation that some countries are working their way out of poverty, and others are not, and what explains the difference? Economics classes today will often begin with a presentation of the "hockey stick" graph of astounding economic growth worldwide in the last 300 years and pose the question, what explains it? The answer, accepted by both Fr. Liberatore and Pope Leo, is upholding of the right to private property by the civil power, and its recognition that individuals in their economic activity, and families, are prior to the State - that is to say, a free market and free society. The State has a role to correct abuses such as oppressively long work hours, but, in general, a sound administration of the State should be sufficient. (nn. 32-33) But Leo XIV's position seems to deny the importance of that hockey stick graph: "The claim that the modern world has reduced poverty is made by measuring poverty with criteria from the past that do not correspond to present-day realities,"(n. 13) Poverty must be defined, he insists, not absolutely, but relative to the standard of living of a particular nation. But if market processes for wealth creation have not diminished poverty (in that understanding), it follows that any confidence that they could continue to do so, in the future, must be the product of sheer "ideologies." And these are described in a straw-man fashion, so that they correspond to no position held by a...

By Auguste Meyrat Of all the arts, poetry is the most inherently religious. Although it is often defined by the use of figurative language, rhythm, and sound devices, what really separates poetry from prose is its subject matter, which transcends the literal and soars into the metaphysical. The techniques of poetry are secondary causes that serve the primary cause of exploring the deep nature of things. Of course, in a post-Christian, postmodern, and increasingly post-literate culture, few people appreciate poetry, let alone read it. It isn't useful, and it pertains to immaterial reality. Even the designated apologists for poetry (i.e., English teachers like me) do a poor job of communicating the power and beauty of poetry, choosing instead to focus their efforts on more marketable verbal skills such as conducting product research and writing business emails. Sad to say, this leaves people today, particularly people of faith, spiritually impoverished. Condemned to a prosaic understanding of the world, everything is consequently disenchanted, even religious devotion. Holy Scripture becomes inscrutable, the presence of God turns into absence, the sacred mysteries degenerate into irrational superstitions, and the devout life flattens into a mindless, if comforting, routine. Sensing this problem, Catholic poet and former nurse Sally Read put together a delightful poetry collection 100 Great Catholic Poems. As she notes in her introduction, "No other literary genre is so concerned with truth - not only in the sense of writing about true things. . . but in the scalpel-precise rendering of things that humans cannot otherwise articulate." Though poetry offers a means for knowing God and His Creation more intimately, Catholics rarely consult their own poetic tradition and likely wouldn't even know where to start. Thus, Sally Read went to the trouble of compiling some of the most excellent verses on the Catholic faith in one book. Beyond representing a brilliant range of experiences, reflections, and emotions that constitute the vast panorama of Catholicism, each poem stands on its own merits, prompting the kind of intense reading and thinking that one associates with prayer or contemplation. Read takes care to narrow her definition of poetry to preclude the vast compendiums of prayers and hymns as well as poetic exclamations of faith. Although some of the first entries in her list by saints of the Early Church seem to violate this definition, they contain enough elements to be read as poems. In addition to including Our Lady's famous words in the "Magnificat," this sufficiently flexible definition allows Read to feature works from St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Clement of Alexandria. While some of the names in the collection will be familiar to readers acquainted with the Western literary canon, the anthology's greatest virtue is the much-needed attention it gives to lesser-known figures, particularly those from early medieval Europe. Despite the innumerable hardships of that time, or perhaps because of them, Irish Catholic monks wrote evocative and poignant accounts of the True Cross ("The Dream of the Rood"), romantic love ("Donal Og"), longings for home ("Columcille Fecit"), or their pet cat ("Pangur Ban"). The sheer diversity of expression is the other great virtue of this anthology, showcasing the very catholicity of Catholicism. No matter the age, the person, or the surrounding context of a particular poem, Christ's face appears. Sometimes He is a hunter seeking His beloved as in St. Teresa of Ávila's "About Those Words, "My Beloved Is Mine," or a bird as in Gerard Manley Hopkins's "As Kingfisher Catch Fire." Or there's this in "Still Falls the Rain" by Edith Sitwell: Still falls the Rain At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross. Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us On Dives and on Lazarus: Under the Rain the sore and the gold are as one. The sacraments are a...

By Luis E. Lugo. The announcement of the appointment of Sarah Mullally as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury marks a historic first for the Church of England (CoE), which traces its origins back more than 1,400 years to the time of Saint Augustine of Canterbury. In addition to being the head of the CoE, the Archbishop of Canterbury also serves as the spiritual leader of the world-wide Anglican Communion, whose thriving churches of the Global South have become increasingly alienated from the mother church due to the latter's long-term drift toward theological liberalism. This appointment will surely widen that breach. Already in the 1940s proposals were circulating in the CoE in support of the ordination of women priests. Those early efforts provided the impetus for a 1948 essay by the well-known Anglican writer, C.S. Lewis. The arguments he lays out in "Priestesses in the Church?" are worth revisiting and seem as relevant today as when he first penned them - and for Catholics as well as Anglicans. As Lewis makes clear at the outset, his opposition to women's ordination is not based on the claim that women are any less capable than men with respect to the many qualifications associated with priestly ministry: "No one among those who dislike the proposal [for the ordination of women priests] is maintaining that women are less capable than men of piety, zeal, learning and whatever else seems necessary for the pastoral office. . . .[Women] may be as 'God-like' as a man, and a given woman much more so than a given man." Lewis further asserts that the Church's historical opposition to the practice of female ordination could not possibly have been rooted in a contempt for women's religious capacities. And that, for one simple reason. As he writes, "the Middle Ages carried their reverence for one Woman to a point at which the charge could be plausibly made that the Blessed Virgin became in their eyes almost 'a fourth Person of the Trinity." Despite this, Lewis continues, never "in all those ages was anything resembling a sacerdotal office attributed to her." Lewis lays out four arguments for his opposition. The first concerns the nature of the priestly office. In the more traditional understanding, the priest is seen primarily as a representative; in fact, he is a "double representative, who represents us to God and God to us." The latter function, in which the priest represents God to us, is something that only a man can perform: "Only one wearing the masculine uniform can (provisionally, and till the Parousia) represent the Lord to the Church: for we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to him." His second argument revolves around the authority of the Church. The practice of only ordaining men to the priesthood is something the Church has done as the bearer of divine revelation, as the guardian of the depositum fidei. If this claim for the Church's authority is false, Lewis contends, "then we want not to make priestesses but to abolish priests." For then the Church would have no authority to ordain anyone. Lewis' third argument centers on the fact that the Church's imagery and language reflect the proper order of things. The Church affirms, for example, that in the Eucharistic celebration the priest stands in persona Christi, in the person of Christ. But the second person of the Trinity is called the Son, not the Daughter. And the mystical marriage is between Christ the Bridegroom and the Church as his Bride; a reversal of these roles is simply unthinkable. Moreover, in the Lord's Prayer, we address ourselves to "Our Father," not to "Our Mother." For Lewis, this language carries great weight. Turning the male language into a feminine gender (or, by extension, into some gender-neutral variation) does violence to our understanding of God. Goddesses were worshipped in other religions, but not in Christianity, he points out. So, to feminize the godhead (or to neuter it) is to embark on a different religion. God Himself, L...

By Brad Miner. There's a show, To the Holy Sepulcher: Treasures from the Terra Sancta Museum, at the Frick Collection in Manhattan (the entrance is just off 5th Avenue at E. 70th St.). It will run until January 5, 2026, and is well worth seeing. If you've not been to the newly renovated Frick, it's a treat, although beautiful as the space is, it lacks the elegant charm of the original, which remained very much like the home of the man who built it. Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) was a robber baron. At 21, he founded the Frick Coke Company, using what's called a beehive oven to turn coal into coke, which the company then sold to steelworks. In a decade, having bought out his partners and having received a loan from his friend Andrew Mellon, he launched H.C. Frick & Company. The next year, he formed a partnership with Andrew Carnegie. After some bitterness, that would lead to lawsuits and settlements. To have a place to relax and fish, Frick and some other rich men bought Lake Conemaugh, a reservoir that was supported by the earthenwork South Fork Dam just above Johnstown, Pennsylvania. They lowered the level of the dam by 3 feet for better transit in and out of the area. On Friday, May 31, 1889, a torrential rainstorm caused the dam to overflow and collapse, sending nearly 4 billion gallons of water flooding into Johnstown and killing more than 2200 people. Frick was never sued, but he did donate "thousands of dollars" to help with Johnstown's recovery. As one poet put it at the time, "All the horrors that hell could wish, / Such was the price that was paid for - fish!" Needless to say, all these years later, the Frick Collection is free of any taint of Mr. Frick's union- or dam-busting activities. And although I'm unsure how much credit he deserves for his art acquisitions - for which he employed the advisory services of notable art experts - the man did know what he liked. He would have agreed with Oscar Wilde: "I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best." Before turning to the Holy Sepulcher exhibit, I must mention that, for me, the Frick's highlight is the counterpointing of Hans Holbein the Younger's portraits of Sir Thomas More (1527) and Thomas Cromwell (c. 1532-33) on either side of the fireplace in the Living Hall. And over the fireplace is El Greco's St. Jerome (1590-1600). And, my goodness, the Frick has three Vermeers! To the Holy Sepulcher: Treasures from the Terra Sancta Museum is a small exhibit with a big impact. As with all great stories of art and archaeology, there is mystery, as well as history, involved. The gist is this: After the Crusades, Franciscans came to the Holy Land, and one group of them took charge of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Obviously, it's a long and complicated history - from the Resurrection to St. Helena's building of a church at the site - but the Franciscans founded the Custodia Terræ Sanctæ. Indeed, it was begun by Saint Francis himself in 1217. That custodia (custodian) is now shared by Catholic and Orthodox communities. But as Alvar González-Palacios writes in the Frick exhibition catalog, much of what is held in custody by Franciscans and others was, until recently, unavailable to the public. His story of gaining entrance to Jerusalem's St. Savior Monastery and its treasures 45 years ago, while not exactly Indiana Jones-worthy, reveals why it was important to launch the coordinated Terra Sancta Museum project. As the Frick explains about the current show: This groundbreaking exhibition presents more than forty rare objects from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Largely unknown to the public until their recent rediscovery, the opulent works range from liturgical objects in gem-encrusted gold and silver to richly decorated vestments in velvet, damask, and other luxurious materials. These treasures were donated by European Catholic monarchs and Holy Roman Emperors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the church in Jerusalem, the religious center ...

Prayer, an elusive conversation with God, confuses many as St. Paul tells us, "For we do not know how to pray as we ought." (Romans 8:26) The Spirit, Who prays in us "with sighs too deep for words" (Romans 8:26), searches our hearts, revealing our innermost secrets, fears, dreams, and desires. This inner revelation worries our conscience, for the depth of our sin becomes a reality. But so, too, the depth of the Father's love, revealed to us through Jesus and the Spirit, frightens our souls, for we experience the power and presence of His purity, purifying our weakened hearts. Divine Love is totally beyond comprehension, as St. Paul explains, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Corinthians 2:9) This intimidates our hearts. We cannot fathom the breadth, height, and depth of Divine Love wanting to engage in our lives. Yet this is what prayer is. It is not so much our conversing with God, as much as it is God speaking directly to us, as He did with Moses, face to face. Such intimacy upsets our stability. Feeling unworthy because of our sinfulness, we hide from Divine Love as Adam and Eve did, ashamed, because our sinfulness dehumanizes us. Unworthy, we hide rather than engage. We flee rather than convert. We freeze, feeling exposed not trusting God, for we do not trust ourselves. Prayer exposes our innermost self not only to our conscience, but to our Father, making us feel uncomfortably self-conscious. Yet, the Father speaks to us heart to heart, not to intimidate, but to affirm. Affirmation is the purpose of prayer, affirming how beloved we are to the Father. In his Apostolic Letter Novo millennio ineunte, St. John Paul reflects on our encounter with God's transcendence: "Prayer can progress, as a genuine dialogue of love, to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine Beloved, vibrating at the Spirit's touch, resting filially within the Father's heart." (32) Through prayer, the Father speaks, revealing us as His children. He gives us His identity, and we become one with Him, partaking in His life. In prayer, He reveals His Son, Who came to find us, feed us, and save us from our self-doubting reservations. We are no longer lost and forsaken, but found radiating Divine Love. During prayer, the Father reveals His affirming love, teaching us not only what it means to be a son or daughter, but more importantly, how to be one. He, through the Son and Spirit, infuses Himself into our very being. This grace, God's gift of Himself transforming our lives, converts us from living solely for created wealth to seek the source of these earthly treasures, the Father Himself. Filled with grace, we, as Mary did, radiate Christ glorified. The Holy Spirit opens His treasure for us, unveiling our beauty and goodness if we avail ourselves of His grace. Opening ourselves to the Spirit reveals "the power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing" (Revelation 5:12) of Christ dwelling in us, if we follow Him. St. Paul teaches this: "According to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." (Ephesians 3:16-17). Wisdom discovers the richness of His glory. Wisdom, the lamp that enlightens our intellects, touches our souls, making us rich in grace: God's life and love. This richness comprehends the thoughts of God and receives graciously all the gifts of the Spirit so we may interpret Divine Truths correctly, for we "possess the Spirit." (I Corinthians 2:13) Possessing the Spirit through prayer, "makes us an everlasting gift" (Eucharistic Prayer III) back to the Father. Through prayer, the Holy Spirit breathes divine life into our hearts. Our heart, an abyss longing for divine life, participates in God's redeeming love when it is docile to the Spirit. Docility, the ability to receive gifts and divine truths, give...

By Stephen P. White The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America (where I serve as executive director) has just published the results of a new major survey of American priests. The study builds on our past research (here and here), giving a clearer picture of the American presbyterate as it currently stands and hinting at what the future might hold for the Church in the United States. This new survey provided an opportunity for a follow-up to the 2022 National Study of Catholic Priests, examining the well-being of our priests, their levels of burnout, confidence in their bishops or religious superiors, and the like. Since every participant in this 2025 study also participated in the 2022 study, we are able to track any changes longitudinally. Our previous studies showed that our priests were, by and large, flourishing. Happily, our new data confirms that American priests are flourishing at levels well above the average for the general population. This result is neither controversial nor surprising, but it should not be overlooked. Men who enter the priesthood tend to flourish. It's not all wine and roses, of course (more on that in a minute). But whatever concerns priests have, whatever challenges they face, should be understood against this backdrop: on the whole, American priests are thriving. That said, there are points of real concern. Many priests (44 percent of diocesan priests, 31 percent of religious priests) show signs of burnout. And 45 percent of younger priests (those ordained since 2000) say they are expected to do too many things that go beyond their calling as a priest. The same percentage of that cohort shows elevated indicators of loneliness. Older cohorts of priests are doing significantly better by both measures. Diocesan priests' confidence in the leadership of their bishops remains low (52 percent), but has risen slightly (up from 49 percent) since our 2022 study. Confidence in the U.S. bishops generally shows a similar trend, rising from 22 percent in 2022 to 27 percent in 2025. Our previous study showed that a priest's perceived alignment with his bishop on political and theological matters correlated with the degree of confidence that the priest had in his bishop's leadership. As our report shows: A far greater predictor of a priest's confidence in his bishop is whether the priest agrees with the statement, "I feel that my bishop cares about me." 72 percent of diocesan priests who said that their bishops care about them express confidence in their bishop, whereas among priests who did not say that their bishop cares about them, only 10 percent express confidence in their bishop. This new finding is perhaps unsurprising, but it strongly underscores the highly personal nature of the relationships between bishops and their priests. A second broad objective of this study was to get a clearer sense of the actual pastoral priorities of American priests. What do our priests see as the greatest pastoral challenges facing the Church in the United States? This included a chance to drill down a bit on what our priests think about the Synod on Synodality, to what degree their parishes participated in the Synod, and how it changed, if at all, their ministry. American priests were not very enthusiastic about the Synod on Synodality. Only 39 percent thought the Synod was not a waste of time (37 percent positively agreed that it was a waste of time); only 28 percent felt they were fully included in the Synod, and only 25 percent agreed that the Synod had been helpful for their ministry. So much for that. But when it comes to synodality in practice, American priests are already engaged in many of the "synodal practices" recommended by the Synod, even if priests don't connect those activities with "synodality" or the Synod itself. So, for example, 85 percent of priests with parish assignments reported that their parish has a pastoral council or similar body that plays an important role in decision-makin...

By Joseph R. Wood. In His discourse at the Last Supper, Christ teaches the Apostles about three related themes: knowing and seeing God, loving God, and being one with God. He holds out these three as different aspects of a single phenomenon. Christ tells the group, "Where I go you know, and the way you know." Thomas insists they don't know where Christ is going. Christ assures him, "If you had known me, you would have known my Father. And henceforth you do know him, and you have seen him." Seeing and knowing are linked. What it is to know, the field of epistemology, is one of the most vexing areas of philosophical investigation. When Philip still asks to be shown the Father - to see Him - Christ explains that He is in the Father, and the Father is in Him. To see Christ is to be shown the Father. See the Father and me as one, Christ seems to exhort them. And if Philip's faith can't fully grasp that identity, he can at least see the visible works Christ has performed. In the dialogue Statesman, Plato seems to offer a choice similar to what Christ gave Philip. The wise "visitor" to Athens explains that "it is not painting or any other sort of manual craft, but speech and discourse, that constitute the more fitting medium for exhibiting all living things, for those who are able to follow; for the rest, it will be through manual crafts." If we can't understand things with our speculative or theoretical intellect, we can get some understanding through concrete things made with our hands: Plato's equivalent of "if you can't understand with your mind, understand through works." And this isn't a mutually exclusive choice. Consider the Benedictine precept of "ora et labora," or "pray and work." Mental acts (including monastic study) and manual acts provide a way of contemplative life, to encounter the greatest truth. In Plato's Republic, Socrates describes our knowledge of reality as like a line divided into four parts: "imagination" that takes in sensory images; "belief" about what the objects whose images we detect really are; "thought" that works with mental concepts such as geometric shapes that we draw from images of objects; and finally "understanding" that seeks to grasp the highest realities, the forms or divine intellectual ideas of truth, beauty, and goodness that transcend the time-matter world. Images and physical objects lie in the domain of the visible, the things that we can sense. The "objects" of mental concepts and the forms are in the intelligible domain that we know through reasoned speech. The intelligible domain on this divided line, says Socrates, is actually the larger part of reality, of what is - larger than the reality we see and sense. Taken together, Socrates and Plato in these cases are telling us that what we know with our intellect is greater than what we can sense. They draw the link between seeing and knowing. For all of us, knowledge begins in the senses. For some of us, our knowledge will be drawn mainly from those senses. For others (philosophers), the higher intelligible truths will be accessible through the speculative intellect. Christ, though, will give the Apostles faith in Him and His Father as the key to the highest truths. Plato wasn't far off - he didn't have Judeo-Christian revelation to work with. Jesus adjusts Plato's approach to make the highest truths available to everyone, and he completes the idea that the full truth is much bigger than the visible world, the works and objects that we see around us. So the problem of seeing and knowing the greatest good has been around for a long time, before the light of Christ brought us a way to understand it more deeply. What about being one with God? Aristotle saw "being one" as a problem of knowing. In his De Anima (On the Soul), he studies the question of how the rational human soul knows something. He claims that "actual knowledge is identical with its object." And he calls the soul the "place of forms." His meaning is not entirely clear, ...

By John M. Grondelski Pope Leo XIV has joined the chorus of those lamenting the implosion of global fertility levels. Speaking after a visit with the President of Italy, the Pope urged action to implosion of fertility and the collapse of childbearing. Encouragingly, he specifically extolled gendered names for family members: "'Father,' 'mother,' 'son,' 'daughter,' 'grandfather,' 'grandmother'. . .[t]hese are words that in Italian tradition naturally express and evoke sentiments of love, respect, and dedication - sometimes heroic - for the good of the family, community, and therefore for that of society as a whole." They also express what is necessary to - and the result of - childbearing, something "parent one" and "parent two," as several countries now designate mothers and fathers, do not. Remedies for this state of affairs often focus on social reforms: parental leave, subsidies and tax breaks for families, childcare, and so on. There are indeed elements in our socio-economic structures that militate against families. It's good that the pope noted them. But methinks his focus might be somewhere else. As his predecessor, St. John Paul II (elected forty-seven years ago today), observed, culture lies upstream from both politics and economics. And our "blessed barrenness" is a cultural problem - both in the larger society and within the Catholic Church. As he said in Love and Responsibility: Neither in the man nor in the woman can affirmation of the value of the person be divorced from awareness and willing acceptance that he may become a father and she may become a mother. . . .If the possibility of parenthood is deliberately excluded from marital relations, the character of the relationship between the partners automatically changes. The change is away from unification in love and in the direction of mutual, or rather, bilateral "enjoyment. Human societies have always recognized that marriage and parenthood, though distinct, normally go together. In other words, in the ordinary run of things - absent disease, advanced age, or other impediments - spouses eventually become parents. This is not some esoteric Catholic doctrine but a natural law reality that human societies have long acknowledged. It's why procreation was understood to be normally connected to marriage - at least until the novel oxymoron of "same-sex marriage" appeared. This natural law fact, however, is elevated to a more significant level by Catholic theological teaching. Vatican II taught: "Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents." (Gaudium et Spes, 50) The Council also affirmed that spousal cooperation with the Lord through parenthood is part of God's work of Creation and Salvation. That's why the nuptial blessing in the sacrament of matrimony includes an invocation that age-appropriate spouses may "be blessed with children, and prove themselves virtuous parents, who live to see their children's children." Now: When's the last time you heard a priest - or even a bishop - talk about those things? Our secular society has broken the nexus between marriage and parenthood, treating the latter not so much as a "choice" as what former Paris Archbishop Michel Aupetit calls a "parental project" - an optional element of two people's identity package, tailored to their desires and achieved by whatever means they deem fit. The general social tolerance of out-of-wedlock childbearing, surrogacy, homosexual "adoption," and similar arrangements attests to a broader cultural acceptance of the idea that children are not necessarily connected with marriage, much less that a child has a right to be conceived, born, and raised within a permanent marriage. If you doubt that, consider whether asserting a child's right to live in a marital environment would jar modern ears. That more general cultural disconnection is now often mirrored within the Church. Catholics immersed in this dominant anti-culture - b...

By David G Bonagura, Jr. Christianity is a religion of paradoxes. One is the strange relationship between the natural world that we see and the supernatural world that we do not. The latter is where God resides and is our ultimate home. At the same time, it is ever-present to us: it sustains and penetrates the natural order while enveloping us in multiple ways. God is present in us through sacramental grace and before us in the Eucharist. He is also present in a different way in other people whom we encounter, an astonishing fact Jesus taught plainly: charitable acts transcend both worlds. "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." (Matthew 25:41) Serving others is as essential to Christian practice as Sunday worship, prayer, and keeping the commandments, and ways to serve are abundant. Rightfully, Catholic schools and religious education programs compel their students to perform charitable works in the hope that they will learn to cultivate a habit of serving. In Book X of The City of God, St. Augustine reminds us of another form of service. "If a man loves himself, his one wish is to achieve blessedness, which is to be near God. Thus, if a man knows how to love himself, the commandment to love his neighbor bids him to do all he can to bring his neighbor to love God. This is the worship of God; this is true religion; this is the right kind of devotion; this is the service which is owed to God alone." If the greatest act of charity is to give God to another person, why don't we regularly encourage this form of giving? Perhaps because it is easier to give money or material things. Perhaps because our view of service suffers from a false dichotomy imagined between worship and charity. Perhaps because deep down we don't believe that God is the ultimate good for our lives. This is not to say that we should cease material giving, which is necessary for all Catholics. Charity, like all things, is best understood in context. Catholic material charity in any form is not designed to be given alone; it is given along with the Gospel. Franciscans, for example, do not give food to the poor and then send them away. They sit with recipients and befriend them with the intention of inviting them to know God. Material charity serves as the channel to God, who is charity - that is, love itself. Hence, as an aside, attacks by states and the federal government against the Little Sisters of the Poor and other Catholic charity groups, on the grounds that the organizations perform social work, not religious work, strike at the essence of Catholicism itself. These government orders, therefore, are unlawful intrusions into the free exercise of religion. Closer to home, how can we give the supreme gift of charity - God - to others, short of teaching the faith directly? First, and perhaps greatest of all, we can bring someone to Mass who would not or could not go otherwise. This someone could be a fallen-away Catholic or an elderly person who needs help getting to church. The fallen away person requires courage to issue the invitation; the elderly person requires a significant sacrifice of time to get the person in and out of our car and then the church. "You received without pay, give without pay." (Matthew 10:8) Second, we can bring to Mass those who can no longer get there. That is, we can have a Mass offered for the repose of a deceased loved one or friend. Better still would be to attend this Mass and offer our prayers for the deceased, as the one sacrifice of Christ is offered on the altar. In fact, I would recommend this practice for all candidates seeking Confirmation: arrange for two Masses for deceased loved ones, pay the offering from your own pocket, and then attend each Mass. In this act, you anticipate the grace you will receive at Confirmation: the strength to bear witness to the faith and bring it to others. Third, and not far from the first two, we can invite - or prod, as the ca...

By Randall Smith. In the 2005 movie Cinderella Man, based on the life of boxer James J. Braddock, there is a touching scene in which Braddock, having had to take government assistance for a time to support his family, shows up at the public assistance office to give that money back. It was there when he needed it, so now he wants to give it back so it will be there for someone else. It is something nearly impossible to imagine today. Giving money back - so that it's there for others? At his 1961 inaugural address, John F. Kennedy famously declared: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." It would be unthinkable now, if not considered "fascist." In Plato's dialogue, the Crito, Socrates's friend Crito tells him that, although he has been condemned to death, government officials will look the other way if his friends bribe the jailers and sneak him into exile in another country. Socrates refuses, telling his friend that, since he was born in Athens, educated in Athens, and has benefited from Athenian law and culture, he owes his existence to Athens and cannot abandon her, even if it means his death. Consider now the common attitude of the modern college student. The military strength of their country has given them years of peace; its economic strength has made them members of the richest country in history; and that country has spent literally millions of dollars on their education, from free public schools to scholarships and low-cost loans to attend some of the finest colleges and universities in the world. How many live with the conviction that they now owe something - anything - to their country, their community, or their parents? It's not so much that they're opposed; the thought has never occurred to them. The bulk of today's young people don't go to colleges and universities because they want to develop skills to be of service to their families, to their neighbors, to their city, state, and country. Nor are they recruited that way. They are lured to college to "get ahead," to "be successful," to become "their bold selves," to "be all they can be," to be "the leaders of tomorrow." Would any contemporary college or university advertise itself as: "Training the servants of tomorrow"? It would be nice if a Christian college or university said something like: "We train our students to serve others, because Christ did." But I fear it would be less popular than, "Come, get yourself on CEO Street!" This sort of marketing is thought necessary in a culture of expressive individualism. "Expressive individualism," writes author Carter Snead, "takes the individual, atomized self to be the fundamental unit of human reality. This self is not defined by its attachments or network of relations, but rather by its capacity to choose a future pathway that is revealed by the investigation of its own inner depths of sentiment. No object of choice - whether property, a particular vocation, or even the creation of a family - is definitive and constitutive of the self. In Michael Sandel's words, it is an 'unencumbered self.'" Expressive individualism "does not recognize unchosen obligations. The self is bound only to those commitments freely assumed. And the expressive individual self only accepts commitments that facilitate the overarching goal of pursuing its own, original, unique, and freely chosen quest for meaning." One sometimes hears the claim, "I'm spiritual but not religious." What this often means is that I don't want to be obligated to anything I haven't chosen. Can one be religious and not patriotic? That's possible, I suppose, if being "patriotic" meant "my country, right or wrong." But not if "being Catholic" means "I owe nothing to my country." There is nothing in Church teaching that would support such a view. Rather, as St. Augustine understood, although Christians are a "pilgrim people," they will often be - and are called to be - the best citizens, because they are not, like so many...

By Robert Royal Today is Columbus Day, or (among the alternatively oriented) Native Peoples' Day, both displaced in any case, as even major Catholic feasts now are, to a different date, so that people will have long weekends, or not be inconvenienced, or something. In any event, it's a day now redefined in terms that make it unclear what, if anything, we are celebrating, or deploring, in this booming, buzzing confusion that we still (kind of) think of as the twenty-first Christian century. So let us seek a little clarity. For most of subsequent history following his voyages, Columbus' reputation was strong and settled. It began to change, in the nineteenth century, in the United States, of all places. Washington Irving got the idea that Columbus must have been a Protestant and a Progressive - he opposed the council of learned theologians, you see, who told him (rightly) that the distance from Spain to China was greater than he was saying. But in an expanding and confident America, El Almirante became, in Irving's imagination, the precursor of American initiative and vision. Medieval Europe, another Columbus myth notwithstanding, knew the world was a ball (see Dante), not flat - what the historian Jeffrey Burton Russell rightly mocked as "the pizza theory." Columbus didn't "prove the earth was round" and no one thought so until ignorance of pre-modern times became widespread. The 19th-century American progressives, however, had still other plans for the Genoese Catholic sailor. Andrew Dickson White, a founder and president of Cornell University, enlisted him in the Darwinian cause - for reasons similar to Irving's, as a maverick who broke with religious obscurantism to "follow the science." Other appropriations and mis-appropriations followed. The Knights of Columbus, mostly Irish, around the same time, saw the explorer as a model Catholic American. And the growing number of Italian immigrants - well, just look at Columbus Circle in Central Park. In recent decades, of course, all that has become the case for the prosecution. A significant swath of American elites has chosen to repudiate its own history, ironically based on cherry-picked Christian principles that Columbus helped bring to the Americas. He's now also often charged with bringing all the evils that have allegedly plagued the Americas since 1492 - slavery, genocide, racism, inequality, patriarchy, rape, torture, war, environmental degradation, disease, etc. Contrary voices have asked (e.g., the present writer): if we're going to attribute all these evils to that man, doesn't he also deserve credit for the many good things that have also followed on these shores? Besides, he didn't have to bring those bad things here because they already existed among the various native peoples also being "remembered" today. Few ever really look at native cultures and practices, which also included colonialism, imperialism, territorial conquest, a warrior ethos, human sacrifice, and - dare one say to our LGBT-ified elites - overwhelmingly, binary views of human sexuality. Prior to the Great Columbus Reversal, in 1892, Pope Leo XIII praised Columbus in Quarto abeunte saeculo: "For the exploit is in itself the highest and grandest which any age has ever seen accomplished by man; and he who achieved it, for the greatness of mind and heart, can be compared to but few in the history of humanity." Leo added: he brought Christianity to "a mighty multitude, cloaked in miserable darkness, given over to evil rites, and the superstitious worship of vain gods." Amidst all these vagaries, the man himself has largely been lost. The Dominican missionary Bartolomé de las Casas, the well-known - almost fanatical - "defender of the Indians," noted the "sweetness and benignity" of the admiral's character. And even while criticizing some things that he did, remarks, "Truly I would not dare blame the admiral's intentions, for I knew him well and I know his intentions were good." Las Casas attributed C...

By Anthony Esolen Pope Leo issued an encyclical on poverty this week. Perhaps he should recommend it in part as a cure for our ills. "Blessed are the poor," says Jesus, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The only time I met the saintly Father Benedict Groeschel, he was too frail to walk on his own. He was one of several of us giving lectures to a Catholic group in Boston, in Faneuil Hall itself, if I remember right - in the belly of the secular beast. "If you want to die a happy death," he said, "be near the poor." He had lived among the poor all his life, so I trust he knew what he was talking about. That it is true, I can well believe. Why it is true is the question. I've worked hard all my life so that my wife and my children, one of whom will never be able to live on his own, will be provided for when I die. I don't spend money on myself. Even with this deliberate holding of material goods at arm's length, I worry sometimes that I'm missing the good that Jesus holds out for us by poverty. It's why, when I pray the Beatitudes, I don't say, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," because for me that would offer an evasion. Nor do I think only that the poor will be blessed by compensation, as in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. For Jesus was an exemplar of poverty here and now. The sparrows had their nests and the foxes their dens, but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. He went into the desert to pray, without food, without drink. On the Cross, He was stripped to the skin, and all His Apostles except for the young John abandoned Him. If I think of the Aramaic in which Jesus addressed the crowds, the identification of poverty with blessedness seems the more immediate and powerful: Blessed the-poor / [for] to-them the-kingdom [of] Heaven. It is a line of Semitic poetry. We may suppose that the kingdom of Heaven will be given to them as a consequence of their poverty, but we may also say that poverty is a condition of their receiving the kingdom of Heaven, not by the arbitrary will of God, but by the nature of the two terms. To be poor as Jesus was poor is to welcome the kingdom of God. If we know what poverty and the kingdom of God are, we know they are inseparable. I do not wish to be misunderstood, though I feel I am groping toward a truth only dimly perceived. We would go wrong, I think, to view this poverty as strictly material, since the materially poor can be as grasping and as hardhearted as any Scrooge. We would also go wrong to spiritualize it completely, so that people can rest content with their full granaries, and look forward to an easy old age, assured by God that they are good, or good enough to get by. Nor can it be half of one and half of the other. Somehow we must cultivate a noble and free disparagement of the goods we own for a brief time on earth, as if they did not matter; or our poverty must be the material sign of, or the embodied discipline for, that humility which alone admits God into our hearts. Somehow we must work at poverty, and that will be easier to do if, as Father Groeschel said, we rub shoulders with the poor. I cannot claim to know how to do this. Nothing in the life that surrounds me will give me the least clue, let alone encouragement. Obviously, the destitute must be cared for, and poverty entangled with moral chaos must be fought on fronts both material and spiritual. The state can do a fair job with the former; is helpless with the latter, and sometimes worse than helpless; sometimes it sows the moral evil that impoverishes body and soul. But I wonder how much of the harm of poverty among us can be alleviated by a general embrace of poverty, or at least by a distaste for wealth, flash, power, glory, and the ceaseless noise of the licentious. There are partial precedents. Mink coats once commanded prices that, expressed in constant dollars, would stagger us now. But those same coats are now disdained. You can pick one up at an antique store for peanuts. A similar thing...

By Dominic V. Cassella In Herodotus' Histories from the 430s BC, we read of a wise Greek philosopher and political thinker, Solon. While traveling, Solon met the King of Lydia, Croesus, who was known for his immense wealth. Croesus asked the philosopher what he thought about his great riches and whether such wealth meant that he, Croesus, was the happiest man alive. To that, Solon replied that you can "Call no man happy until he is dead." Solon's point is that as long as someone is living, though they may be happy today, fortunes change, and bad decisions are made that can result in the fall of even the most well-off and mighty. Now, we should ask: Is Solon right? Is it only the dead whom we can call happy? To this, the Christian says "yes." It just depends on how you are dead. For if you are dead to sin (Romans 6:11, 1 Peter 2:24), having been crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20), then your true life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). This is because, if we die with Christ, "we will also live with Him" (2 Timothy 2:11), and in this life in Christ we find true happiness. But what, concretely, does all this mean? How can we live this new life in Christ? And what is it to take up the Cross (Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34, and Luke 9:23) and be crucified with Him? In Fr. Thomas Joseph White's latest book, Contemplation and the Cross: A Catholic Introduction to the Spiritual Life, we are given a comprehensive answer to these questions. Originally put together as a spiritual retreat for a Catholic religious order, Contemplation and the Cross also serves as a sequel to an earlier work of Fr. White's The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (reviewed by Robert Royal here). In this new book, the same perspicacity and readability are present as they were in the prequel. Fr. White - a Dominican and now Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (the Angelicum) in Rome - has written with the express purpose of offering the reader two different resources, which are evident in the body of the text and the footnotes. This is a book that can be read through for its own lucid exposition of the Catholic tradition, or scanned for its rich references for further study in figures such as Thomas Aquinas, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, as well as modern magisterial texts. Each chapter identifies and explores a "cause" of the Catholic spiritual life. The primary source and efficient cause of the spiritual life is God Himself. So the first chapter begins with the "final" cause - the "why" or "goal" of the spiritual life. In this unusual opening, we immediately see the difference it makes to view things in the light of Christ. Man, by nature, gropes in shadows as he reaches for the truth. In the covenant of the Old Testament, the Law served as a guardrail to prevent God's chosen people from holding on to what is self-destructive. With the coming of Light, who is Jesus Christ, we are no longer in darkness but have been offered "grace and truth." (John 1:16-17, John 17:17) But what is this spiritual life and what are the means by which we live it? Here we find the relevance of the Cross which, as the new tree of our redemption, repairs the damage done by the old tree at the Fall. In emptying Himself, the Son of God has taken on the poverty and slavishness of human nature and has become obedient "even unto the Cross." (Philippians 2:7-8) It is through His assumption of human flesh and crucifixion that He redraws "the lines of our humanity from within and [reorients] us toward God anew." The Cross, then, is where we find the exemplar of obedience to God. In contemplating Christ crucified, we find as our model the virtues of righteousness. And in Mary, His mother, we see the exemplar of what it means to live our lives with eyes upon the Cross. In grace and truth, we possess the means by which we unite ourselves to Christ and "become recipient of the mercy of God and a servant or steward of divine mercy." Cen...

By Casey Chalk There was a time when German Catholics fought for the faith. One hundred and fifty years ago, half the bishops of Prussia were imprisoned, as were hundreds of parish priests, leaving more than a thousand parishes orphaned. All of them had refused to cooperate with various Prussian laws, often called "May Laws," intended to suffocate the independence of the Catholic Church in favor of an "ecumenical" brand of Protestantism. German lay Catholics responded by providing hiding places for clergy, paying fines clergymen incurred from the state, and purchasing bishops' furniture at auction. And they were just getting started. As Roger Chickering explains in his recent book The German Empire, 1871-1918, this battle between the German State and Catholics was years in the making, and shows a Catholic Church in Germany that was orthodox, pious, and deeply fervent. It is not only a demonstrable difference from a German church today, which is hemorrhaging members, but also likely explains why the German-American experience - which included such a large percentage of Catholics - was itself so vibrant, giving us such saints as St. John Nepomucene Neumann and St. Marianne Cope. The conflict in Germany began in 1837, when the Prussian government incarcerated the archbishop of Cologne over a dispute regarding mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants. In the decades that followed, German Catholicism was reinvigorated. In 1844, more than half-a-million Catholics made a pilgrimage to an exhibition of the Holy Coat in Trier. There was also a dramatic increase in the number of religious organizations: between 1837 and 1864, the number of monasteries in Bavaria quintupled. This concerned many German Protestants, particularly liberals and those in positions of government, who believed that the fulfillment of German unification and the Protest Reformation required the destruction of Rome's power in Germany. To disempower the Catholic Church in Germany, these parties reasoned, would remove a foreign intruder from the German body politic, a relic of a superstitious past, and usher in a single Protestant German national church. Unfortunately for Catholics, Protestant liberals and their allies enjoyed a majority in the 1871 Reichstag of the new imperial Germany, and exploited that power to introduce a new provision to the federal penal code, stipulating imprisonment of up to two years for any clergyman who addressed affairs of state in a manner likely to disturb the public peace. The "pulpit paragraph" was the opening salvo in what came to be known as the "culture war" or Kulturkampf. A suite of further anti-Catholic legislation followed. One law empowered the state to remove clergymen from positions they had previously held as local school inspectors. Another forbade religious orders from teaching in state schools. Yet another banished the Jesuits and several other orders from Germany altogether. Still others demanded that German clergy be educated at German universities, and that clergy pass a "culture test" that was not required of Protestant theology students. Papal disciplinary actions were made subject to Prussian state oversight. In response, Pope Pius IX declared that the duty of Catholics to obey secular authority was valid only so long as the state "ordered nothing against God's commandment and the Church." In 1873, the bishops forbade Catholics from complying with the May Laws. This did not deter the Prussian parliament, which banned all Catholic religious orders from Prussia and introduced compulsory civil marriage. Chickering observes: "The liberals abandoned their political ideals, this time religious toleration, freedom of assembly, and the equal protection of the laws." By 1876, all of Prussia's twelve Catholic bishops were either in prison or exile. Approximately 200 clergymen were fined or imprisoned, along with more than a hundred Catholic newspaper editors. Twenty Catholic newspapers were closed down. That sa...

By Michael Pakaluk. But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight - Thursday, October 9 at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss 'Dilexi te,' Pope Leo's first Apostolic Exhortation, the pope's planned trip to Lebanon, and his comments on Gaza, as well as other issues in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel. Now for today's column... Ask an educated Catholic what the two leading teachings of Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum are, and, if he knows anything at all about this foundational text of modern Catholic social teaching, he will likely say that it endorses labor unions and articulates the principle of a living wage. The doctrine of a living wage is indeed important, even if it cannot be followed in the United States today, given current mores and employment law. The doctrine is that to hire a father, who is the head of a household, is to hire in effect a family, not a mere individual, and therefore he must be paid a wage sufficient for supporting a large family, and sufficient too for him to save something, so as to acquire "substance" over time - on the assumption that his family lives modestly and thriftily. As for the worker's associations envisioned in the encyclical, they do not exist primarily for collective bargaining, and "they must pay special and chief attention to the duties of religion and morality." (n. 57) Despite our praise of Rerum Novarum as a fundamental founding document, one might reasonably judge that these two teachings have been pervasively abandoned. But these are not the two leading teachings of the encyclical, which are rather that: (1) socialism is a disastrous mistake which chokes the sources of wealth and subverts the family, and that (2) no solution to "the problem of labor and capital," or to any other grave social problem, is possible without a revival of Christianity. Leo XIII did not define socialism as "State ownership of the means of production," but rather, as a philosophy that denies that the individual in his economic activity is prior to the State, and denies also that the family is a true society prior to the State. In particular, it denies the authority of the father, who, Leo says, has a claim over the resources of his household at least as weighty as the State's. Leo grapples with socialism in several of his encyclicals. He clearly regards it as the great menacing problem of our time. It would be foolish to suppose that such a deep challenge to Christian civilization, as he thought it to be, was put to rest by Fabian-style reforms in the direction of a Welfare State. Rather, in our use of fiat currency, in our Great Society initiatives (which have undermined the family), and in the State's claim to redefine marriage, one sees this very philosophy of socialism. Does anyone today suppose that limits to the taxing power of the State are fixed by natural law in the prior claims of the family as a true society? Or is it part of our public consciousness that the giant wealth transfer, which is Social Security, is a matter of free gift rather than putative "right" - a claim of right by the retired elderly over the resources of growing young families? So, no, it seems we have not put to rest the "socialism" that Leo worried about. As for the second, genuinely leading idea, it would be hard to claim that it conditions our interpretation of "Catholic Social Doctrine" today. I urge readers to read paragraphs 16-30 of the encyclical and ponder them anew: "No practical solution will be found apart from the intervention of religion and of the Church," Leo insisted, and "All the striving of men will be vain, if they leave out the Church." (n. 16) Do we believe this? Leo draws attention indeed to the glory of the Ch...

By Francis X. Maier Every few years, I reread a couple of my favorite authors. George Orwell, despite his disdain for things Catholic, has always been on my list. This time I paid special attention to his essay, "The Principles of Newspeak." He appended it to his dystopian novel 1984. As Orwell noted in his text, Newspeak - the language of Oceania's Airstrip One (formerly the UK) - had three distinct vocabularies; A, B, and C. The B vocabulary "had been deliberately constructed for political purposes." Its words "had, in every sense, a political implication." They were designed to impose a desired mental attitude upon the user. A perfect such B-word was duckspeak. It meant "to quack like a duck." Ultimately, for Newspeak's linguists: it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all. . . .[Thus, like] various other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker, it was paying a warm and valued compliment. On the other hand, duckspeak could also be used to describe and vilify any opinion seen by the Party as crimethink. In effect, words meant whatever, and only whatever, the Party wanted them to mean in any given circumstance. The other author I've returned to this year is the philosopher, Augusto Del Noce. After flirting with the Italian Left as a young man, Del Noce later reverted to his Catholic faith. In the aftermath of World War II until his death in 1989, he wrote a series of brilliant reflections (collected here and here) critiquing Marxist thought, technological civilization, the sexual revolution, progressive politics and theology, and the emerging contours of the postmodern world. Of special interest, given our current environment, is his essay from the late 1960s, "On Catholic Progressivism." In it, he argued that: Whereas a discussion with a rigorously Marxist intellectual is possible, it is not so with a Catholic progressive. Not because we despise him, but because he despises his critic, treating him already from the start as somebody who stops at mere formulaic intellectualism. Therefore, one does not discuss with a Catholic progressive, but in front of him, just hoping that our arguments may provide an opportunity to stimulate his critical reflection. If Del Noce's frustration sounds familiar, it should. Internal Catholic debate has been fractious since the close of Vatican II, with renewed tension in the last 12 years. Whatever its strengths, the Francis pontificate, despite its purported openness, was the most authoritarian in more than a century, resistant to even faithful criticism, loose in matters of Church law, and marked by a studied ambiguity in various issues of doctrine. We now have a new pope who's taken the name "Leo." His predecessor, Leo XIII, worked tirelessly to bring the modern world into line with eternal principles through his personal leadership and encyclicals like Rerum Novarum. We can hope that Leo XIV will do the same. We need that kind of faithful leadership urgently, because per Del Noce's essay above, today's Catholic progressivism - renascent during the Francis years - represents the "exact inverse" of Leo XIII's efforts. In contrast, it seeks "to bring Catholicism into line with the modern world." This is most obvious in, but not limited to, matters of sexuality. There's a gulf between respecting persons with same-sex attraction and their God-given dignity, and affirming morally destructive sexual behaviors. Channeling Del Noce at Rome's 2018 synod of bishops, Archbishop Charles Chaput, among others, stressed that "what the Church holds to be true about human sexuality is not a stumbling block. It is the only real path to joy and wholeness." He went on to argue that: There is no such thing as an "LGBTQ Cathol...

By George J. Marlin In the summer of 2014, Yohana Al-Zebbaree was a 12-year-old boy when his world turned upside down. From his home in Duhok, a city in northern Iraq, he recalls the whispers spreading across neighborhoods, saying that ISIS was moving closer. "There was this huge scare," says Al-Zebbaree, now 23. "I remember the night when they said that ISIS was approaching the northern cities, like Erbil and Duhok. Everyone was watching the news, and we got multiple phone calls from our relatives telling us to leave town and go further north." While Erbil and Duhok never fell, Mosul - the second-largest city in Iraq with almost 2 million inhabitants and just a short drive away - was taken. And the Nineveh Plain, with Mosul as its regional capital, home to some of Iraq's most ancient Christian communities, was overrun. Hundreds of thousands fled, swelling Erbil's refugee camps. Churches became shelters; classrooms turned into dormitories; streets filled with families who had left everything behind but their faith. The Christians who lived in the provincial capital of Mosul on the Nineveh Plain - in ancient times the City of Nineveh - have ancestors whose roots go back to the very beginning of Christianity. The region had been the traditional home of Assyrian Christians and gave birth to the monastic movement. But on June 11, 2014, the city's Chaldean Catholic Archbishop, Emil Nona, announced that the last Christians had fled the city. Describing reports of attacks on churches and monasteries, Archbishop Nona said: "We received threats … [and] now all the faithful have fled the city. I wonder if they will ever return here…. My diocese no longer exists; ISIS has taken it away from me." Open Doors, a religious freedom advocacy group, agreed with the archbishop. "This could be the last migration of Christians from Mosul," its representative said. "The Islamist terrorists want to make Iraq a 'Muslim only' nation and as a result they want all Christians out." Amid this chaos, the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil, led by Archbishop Bashar Warda, recognized that those refugee families needed more than shelter and food. They needed education, both religious and secular, and hope for the future. In 2015, the Catholic University in Erbil (CUE) opened its doors as Iraq's first private non-profit university. Next week, as the university graduates its fifth class, it will also celebrate its 10th anniversary - a milestone born of resilience and faith in the face of what once seemed overwhelming odds. CUE's first academic building was funded by the Italian Bishops' Conference. Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a papal charity, followed with funding for new wings for the study of subjects such as architecture and medicine, and the provision of laboratories and a modern library. Between 2018 and 2019 alone, ACN-USA contributed more than $1.8 million. An educational initiative that began in hope with only eleven students has grown to more than 760. About 65 percent of the student body now studies on full scholarships, most of which are funded by ACN. And today, the Christians of Iraq are reaping the fruits of that carefully targeted generosity. The entire people of Iraq will as well. For a community that now accounts for less than 1 percent of the population, because of years of persecution, Iraq's Christians can and must have significant influence on the direction of the nation. CUE is providing a major contribution to that war-torn country in that regard. While CUE is rooted in the Catholic tradition, its doors are open to all. About 60 percent of its students are Christian, 30 percent are Muslim, and the rest belong to smaller groups such as the Yazidis. In a country where religious and ethnic divisions often run deep, the campus offers a rare example of daily coexistence and common purpose. "When you go to the villages, you see the Christians on one side and Muslims on the other," says John Smith, a university trustee. "But at the ...

By Brad Miner Honestly, I've had it. I'm now all but certain there has never been a movie about exorcism that has had Christ at its heart. Thanks to Catholic author William Peter Blatty, the original Exorcist was good. Director William Friedkin deserves credit for a fine assist. It comes close but misses. No reverence. I asked Grok3 to list all the movies about exorcism. It hedged a bit: While it's impossible to list every motion picture ever made about exorcism due to the vast number of obscure, international, and low-budget films produced worldwide (including many direct-to-video releases), below is a comprehensive compilation drawn from major film databases, critic rankings, and horror genre resources. It's almost comforting to see an AI bot use the word "impossible." In five seconds, it churned out a 1200-word list with descriptions of 51 films. Despite how it sometimes feels to me, this proved I haven't seen them all. The Grokster ended helpfully: "If you'd like expansions on specific eras, countries, or sub-themes (e.g., non-Christian exorcisms), let me know!" Oh, no! I don't want that. I'm just here to say ave atque vale to the Conjuring franchise that, in some ways, set a standard both high and low. There are nine films in what is now called The Conjuring Universe. Why do producers add "Universe" to their sequel-isms? To make lofty what is repetitive and often banal? Perhaps they don't care for the actual universe they're living in. This franchise consists of four films in the main series: The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021), and The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025). Additionally, there was Annabelle Comes Home (2019), which also features the Universe's main protagonists, Ed and Lorraine Warren. That means four Conjuring films are Warren-less. I sort of reviewed #s 1 and 2 here. The thing is this: Patrick Wilson (as Ed) and Vera Farmiga (as Lorraine) are very fine performers. (Both can sing, by the way, Mr. Wilson especially well.) It's a rare actor who doesn't sign on to some projects for no reason other than the paycheck. For Last Rites, Wilson and Farmiga have been doing a kind of Conjuring farewell tour, complete with a New York Times interview ("Horror's Mom and Dad Say Goodbye to the 'Conjuring' Movies"), but I suspect they're relieved, paychecks notwithstanding. And I'm relieved, because one hates to see talent wasted. Anyway, on to The Conjuring: Last Rites, which is the burden I carry (lightly) today. It cost $55 million to make and has already brought in more than $400 million worldwide. (The current #1 in the world in an animated feature, Ne Zha 2. I didn't know there was a Ne Zha 1, but #2 has hauled in a respectable $2 billion, although a mere $23 million in the US of A. The are a lot of people in China. Still, those Chinese communists sure know how to pick our American pockets.) The Warrens were real people. I don't know if they were either entirely sane or honest (possibly sane if dishonest), but they catapulted to fame in 1975 via a case known as the Amityville Horror (books, movies, collectibles, sequels), and the Warrens were just getting started. It must be mentioned, however, that the whole Amityville shebang was a tissue of lies, which we know because the attorney who represented the haunted Long Island family - and netted them several hundred thousand dollars from book and movie deals - later admitted they made it all up with a writer and a couple of bottles of wine. But The Warrens - he died in 2006, she in 2019 - always maintained it was all true. The Warrens were Catholic. People in Connecticut, where they lived, have attested to the Warrens' regular Mass attendance. The estimable Jimmy Akins has suggested that, as paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine may have consulted with exorcists. They may have been nice folks. But neither of the Warrens was a priest, so they were not and could not be exorcists for the Roman Catholic Church. As t...